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June 18 – Stony Creek, CT

Amici Mooring Ball

We finally untied the lines from the Branford Yacht Club and moved up the Connecticut coast…although not very far. Our friends have a mooring ball in the Thimble Islands, which is only five miles away. Not a long day, but it did feel nice to be back on the water. We picked up their mooring ball and then lowered the dinghy and explored the islands and the little town of Stony Creek. This evening Ted picked us up at the dinghy dock and we spent the evening enjoying Ted and Sally’s company along with their friends Nol and Robin.

Whether it was a hurricane of monumental proportions or just some heavy current, a little piece of Maine happened to wash upon the Connecticut shore some years ago...the Thimble Islands. Like a message in a bottle that lands upon a beach, each of the 33 inhabited islands, both large and small, have a story to tell. President Taft had a summer cottage here and legend tells that Captain Kid hid his treasuries on one of the islands.

The Thimble Islands is an archipelago consisting of small islands in Long Island Sound, located in and around the harbor of Stony Creek in the southeast corner of Branford, Connecticut. They may look like Maine, but they are made up of Stony Creek pink granite bedrock that was once the tops of hills prior to the last ice age. Their name derives from the thimbleberry, a type of black raspberry that used to grow in abundance on the islands.

There are 90 or so homes scattered over the 33 inhabited Thimbles, from a 27-room Tudor-style mansion built in 1902 to small summer bungalows. All the islands are privately owned. These islands may look like Maine, we haven’t seen that coast yet, but they remind me of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River, that we visited last summer. 

The Pearl on the Amici mooring ball
Pictures of a few of the Thimble Islands
Stony Creek waterfront and dinghy dock
The flowers are in bloom everywhere...so pretty
A few of the buildings in Stony Creek

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